16 Days After Vanishing in Maui Forest, an 'Urgent Update'

Amanda Eller, 35, has been found in Maui 'in remarkably good shape'
By Jenn Gidman,  Newser Staff
Posted May 25, 2019 6:30 AM CDT
16 Days After Vanishing in Maui Forest, an 'Urgent Update'
"Amanda Eller is ALIVE!!!!"   (Facebook)

"URGENT UPDATE!" reads the most recent post on the "Amanda Ellers Missing" Facebook page—and that update is that she's no longer missing. The 35-year-old, who vanished 16 days ago while hiking on Maui's Kahakapao Trail, was found alive, with minor injuries, Friday in a deep ravine between two waterfalls, spotted by a helicopter search team commissioned by her family to find her. Hawaii News Now reports Eller appeared to be in "remarkably good shape," with family members telling the outlet she hadn't broken anything and was "very alert and very aware," though she was scratched up and suffering from bad sun exposure.

"I think she took a good fall," her father tells Maui 24/7, adding that the ravine she was found in was so deep that Eller's rescuers had to be airlifted out with her. Javier Cantellops, one of the rescuers, posted a jubilant (and NSFW) video on his Facebook page as they pushed through the brush to get to Eller. "We have f---ing found her!" he exclaimed, barely able to contain himself. "We didn't give up. … We're hiking to her right now." Cantellops posted a photo of himself and the other rescuers posing and smiling with Eller once they reached her. NBC News notes it's unclear what Eller's condition is, but her family is over the moon. "Elated. Excited. Ecstatic," her mother says, per Hawaii News Now. "I can't even put it into words." (More missing person stories.)

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